Walnut is weird. Staining will hold its color better than say going natural. Natural finish will amber and actually appear to make the wood look lighter. But when you sand it clean it gets dark again.

In my opinion its the finish that causes the confusion.
Someone else may disagree but its just my two cents.

This is what the 'main' flooring guy is telling me too. He is suggesting we go with a brown stain such as Provincial, Special Walnut, Jacobean, etc. Do you know which stain will be closer to the natural color of walnut with warmth but no overt red undertones (and no orange/yellow either)?

We are going for a warm cozy look that is not too dark.

You are using bona stains? I dont work with bona stains. Sorry i know jacobean is dark so i would shy away from that.

The whole point of walnut is it's dramatic grain. Grain that is obscured by stain. If you are going to stain it, you could have saved yourself a considerable expense by chosing a different wood.

I'm usually in the camp that thinks Walnut should be natural but I'm also in the camp that prefers oil poly. I don't believe that Naturale provides any UV protection, so when using a clear sealer, the Walnut will turn golden where you have strong sunlight. Staining will counteract this somewhat.
Bona has three options for natural, Bona Seal, Amberseal and DTS. The Amberseal or DTS might provide better fading protection than the Bonaseal but Bona's website doesn't indicate that either would protect against fading.

Thanks. We want the stain light enough that the beauty of the grain stills shows through. They've put down a couple of light stain samples (Puritan Pine and Natural) and they both are quite light and still show the grain. However the PP was orange-y and the Natural won't offer any color protection over time so we are looking for something a hint darker in the brown family that doesn't change the color too much but will just help prevent drastic color change that might happen if the wood was left in the natural state.

Still waiting on new stain samples. Just looking for a warm rich depth to the wood without too much color change.

Please post updates, I also just had walnut HW installed. To be sanded soon.

Here is a pic. We looked at a bunch of samples including early american, special walnut, and provincial. In the end we felt those were all too dark or red or orange. But we liked the color of the provincial so we tried cutting it 50% with natural. IIt looked almost identical to natural so we went with that and here are the results after two coats of mega on top. Final coat will be either Naturale or traffic HD extra matte.

[IMG]

Nice!

and here are a couple daytime shots (the first one was evening)

[img]

[img]

Absolutely, beautiful! I am anxious to see how mine looks after sanding, etc. Also, love your fireplace and built-ins esp the hutch.

How did this hold up? Did it discolor?